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Successful weekend and pictures of my first fabric art journal

Well, we had an excellent day yesterday for the Captain’s drive in at Borris Golf Club. The weather was fantastic, over 140 members participated, the finger food went down very well and luckily my drive was long and straight, definitely a day that will stay in my mind as a great start to the 2010 golfing calendar.

Fabric art journal

As promised on Saturday, here is a picture of the fabric art journal that I made during the workshop with the South East Textile Group in Castlecomer. We all started by deciding what size we wanted to our covers to be. Sheila, our excellent facilitator for the day had a great selection of recycled cardboard boxes which we were free to choose from and I choose a piece large enough to make a journal suitable to hold A4 sheets of paper. Without going through every last little step taken we basically spent some time working out our design ideas, created stamps with foam and wood, colour washed our base fabric if we wanted (I sponged mine with diluted orange and gold inks) and then printed and painted the design on top. Once we were happy with our printed fabric we ironed it, stuck paper on top of our cardboard and then stuck the fabric down on top of the paper paying careful attention to areas such as the corners.

I decided to make a couple of stamps based around Autumn berries, the rosehips look more like carrots however and the berries like bubbles but overall the design holds together pretty well I think, especially since drawing is definitely not one of my better subjects!

Rosehip and berry detail

I liked overprinting with the stamps until all the colour had practically left the design and in the middle of the journal I didn’t print any hips at all but just a lot of berries. I also started to make my first impression of each stamp on paper and these little extra pieces I will now cut up and use to decorate some hand made cards to give to friends whenever a birthday or special occasion arises. Another very enjoyable aspect of the day was the interlude when experienced member Carmel gave us some interesting excercises to do relating to colour mixing and colour perception. All in all the day was extremely worthwhile and I can definitely see myself creating more of these journals especially as a project combining recycled materials and hand made felt with children. The only thing left to do now is attach a button or piece of wood to the front of the cover as a closure and I like the string that I used for a loop as I think it’s definitely in keeping with the earthy Autumnal theme. My only reservation at the moment is does the design look very 70’s? Sort of dated roller blinds for the kitchen????

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One thought on “Successful weekend and pictures of my first fabric art journal”

NO they do not look like roller blinds!!! It looks very retro and chic. I agree if you make several, they make great last minute gifts. In September after school is in session, the stores around here clearance their school supplies, hence I like to snap up the inexpensive lecture books, make covers for them and stash as nice gifts. You are a highly skilled felt maker and could easily make wool covers, my felt is never thin enough at least without holes. I usually use found objects as stamping tools on thin fabric. I like the idea of using inks as I usually use watered down acrylic paint.